Salzburg
To Widen the Spectrum of Possibilities: An Interview with Marios Joannou Elia
The young Cypriot composer Marios Joannou Elia talks about his compositions for unusual performance spaces, the challenges of working outside of the opera house and concert hall, and his upcoming projects. Elia, who has studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, is the recipient of the Witold Lutoslawski Award and the Kazimierz Serocki Prize in Warsaw, the Edison Denisov Prize in Moscow and the BMW Patronize Award of the Musica Viva in Munich. He received numerous commissions and his music has been performed in prestigious performance venues such as the Staatsoper Stuttgart, the Berliner Philharmonie, as well as the Staatsoper Hannover.
Salzburg Wrap-up
Ok, this year’s festival was a short one for me. I saw only a couple of performances but some of these were really excellent!
Because once is never enough!
Almost exactly one year after I heard Claus Guth’s Figaro in Salzburg, I had the chance to hear that same production again yesterday (again in the Orchesterhauptprobe). The impression it made on me was even better than last July. It’s a very intelligent staging and the cast consists of truly great singers, amongst them Gerald […]
Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques in Salzburg
This was an amazing concert. The Basel Sinfonietta under Stefan Asbury and Geneviève Strosser (viola) performed Gérard Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques at the Salzburg Festival. Having thought a lot about an aethetics of spacial music listening I found yesterday’s concert to be a perfect stimulus. It was incredible to hear this piece in its entirety […]
Ultraschall
The Ultraschall Festival für Neue Musik begins today. I am listening to the live broadcast of the opening concert right now. I’m going to post comments as we go along, refresh your browser from time to time. Tonight’s program features pieces by Hans Otte, Olga Neuwirth, Sebastian Claren, and Pierre Boulez. The festival program is […]
Nachtseite der Vernunft
Having just returned from a trip to Munich today, I found the new program for the Salzburg Festival 2007 in my mailbox! As you probably all know the festival has a new artistic director (Jürgen Flimm). Since Flimm is a opera/theater person he has put Markus Hinterhäuser in charge for the concert events at the […]
Mozart: La Finta Giardiniera
This is the second time that I am reporting from the Landestheater in Salzburg. The first post was on Zaide/Adama by Mozart and Czernowin. This time I’ll write about the premiere of Doris Dörrie’s staging of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera. Doris Dörrie is a well-known TV and film director in Germany, who debuted in opera […]
Premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Gogo No Eiko
Three years ago the Salzburg Festival staged the world premiere of Henze’s L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe, a huge success at the time. It is thus no wonder that today’s performance of Gogo No Eiko drew a lot of media attention. The aging composer himself was present for the concert premiere of the third […]
Trio Wanderer and Gérard Caussé: Mozart and Schedl
Today at twenty past seven my girlfriend got a call from a festival manager in Salzburg: “Can you be here in 10 minutes to turn pages in a chamber music concert?” She could … and she took me along, too. We had no idea what was on the program, nor did we know who actually […]
Word Creations #1
molldüster engelhaft süßes Tenortimbre flehentlich-expressive Nuancierung warme Baßfülle Julia Spinola on Mozart’s Betulia liberata at the Salzburg Festival. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 22, 2006, p. 31.
The Arditti Quartet plays Kyburz, Dusapin, Ferneyhough, and Lachenmann
One of the many good things about New Music concerts at the venerable Salzburg Festival is that a lot of people who have expensive tickets are leaving in the intermission. This comes in handy when the piece in the second half is Grido by Helmut Lachenmann, a composition that employs a lot of very quite […]
Premiere of Czernowin’s Zaide – Adama in Salzburg
Somewhere towards the end, there is a short moment of hope. The possibility of forgiveness. The possibility of reconciliation and fraternization. Everything is up in the air. Will Soliman, the despotic ruler of the Serail forgive the lovers Zaide and Gomatz who are desperately in love which each other and try to flee from him? […]
Shopping
After weeks of abstinence I finally bought new CDs, scores, and books yesterday. For those of you who live in Berlin, check out the Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann. It has a huge collection of classical music CDs in the basement. Here is what I bought: 1) The Camerata Salzburg conducted by Sandor Vegh with Bartok’s Divertimento for […]
Post Scriptum Figaro
Here is what the Deutsche Presse Agentur has to say about yesterday’s premiere of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Salzburg Festival. As always the premiere drew a very distinguished and elitist crowd of politicians, stars, artists, and business people. But not only those who were lucky and rich enough to get tickets enjoyed the […]
Anna Netrebko in Salzburg
Yesterday at the Orchesterhauptprobe (main orchestra rehearsal) for Le Nozze di Figaro at the Salzburg Festival I had the chance to hear, for the first time, the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. What a big disappointment. It’s not that Netrebko is a bad singer (she is a fairly good one), or that she doesn’t look well […]
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